Facebook to launch "simplistic" privacy choices soon

Reacting to the latest privacy backlash, Facebook will be rolling out new "simplistic" privacy options for its users in the coming weeks, according to Facebook head of public policy Tim Sparapani.

"Now we’ve heard from our users that we have gotten a little bit complex," Sparapani said in a radio interview Tuesday. "I think we are going to work on that. We are going to be providing options for users who want simplistic bands of privacy that they can choose from and I think we will see that in the next couple of weeks."

While it’s not clear what those options will look like or if they will be presented to existing users, one supposes that at least new users will be given some broad options to choose from along the lines of "I’m an exhibitionist," "I like sharing with a lot of people, but not everybody" and "I’m a private person who just wants to share with friends and family."

Currently, new users are set to very public defaults, including having their profile information shared with other online services such as Yelp and Pandora.

The proposed changes are unlikely to reverse the company’s December decision to make large portions of a user’s profile into "publicly available information" -- which means even if you hide the fact you support a gun rights organisation in your profile settings, that’s still findable online.

"We have built a privacy setting for every new type of sharing [users] are allowed to have," Sparapani said. "What that means is that in fact we have come up with an extraordinary number of privacy settings."

"This should be compared to almost any other company out there where there are no privacy settings at all," he added. "So Facebook should be getting credit here for giving tools in the first place."

Sparapani also touted Facebook’s recent unveiling of the "Like" button and other features which let sites embed information from your friends around the web.

"We have customised every single website out there for people who choose to have it," Sparapani said. "That is an extraordinary gift to the public."